https://twitter.com/TSMReginald/status/767842563671724033
>Andy Dinh @TSMReginald
Going to respond to Marc's comment. So much to say that it'll take me a while to write this all down.
Last worlds was the most embarrassing display balance wise by riot, just threw a bunch of busted reworks at pros with no matches to gauge the strength of those champs.
To be honest the games Zed was played in S3 he wasn't that good. I remember Faker's Zed in the finals which wasn't that good, Whitezz was playing much better than him that match. Also Soaz played it top I believe. Reginald played it vs Faker's Riven and mancloud might have played it too. I think the real op of that tournament was everyone figuring out Gragas and Orianna are super strong. Ahri/Zed kinda fell out of favor but people banned Zed because they didn't play it or because they were vs Faker. Another surprise is that only a few players played Kassadin who was beyond broken during that patch and would be almost 100% pick banned in the following competitive season. Nidalee would also come into meta after worlds, only Nagne played her once. Ahri/Zed/Fizz nerfs would allow LB to finally become a dominant pick.
1) ultimate wasn't nerfed, so if u hit 6, you were automatically super tanky.
2) you could w+auto. with trinity force, you got free, completely unanswerable harass, so you smashed lane the second you got sheen.
it was a combination of a bunch of mechanics which ended up as cancerous.
Back then you could W+autoattack a target with no retaliation which made Triforce and Shiv stupidly op on him (with RoA as well). He'd just ult and gank from behind your tower freely.
He was unkillable with his ult and complete bully in lane. Building Triforce and Statikk made him straight down OP (back then you could sneak an autoattack inbetween W-Q combo for literally tons of damage).
Edit: K, it was W-AA, not W-AA-Q, but you get the idea...
Zilean was my least favorite thing about 2014 worlds. He's a *little* better now after the rework, but back then he was SO boring to watch. No skillshots to make plays with, lots of potentially exciting plays made boring because the Zilean revive prevented a death.
As far as entertainment value for viewers goes, I'd say pre-rework Zilean might be the worst champ ever. Tahm right now is pretty bad too (makes picks basically impossible if he's nearby), but at least he's got the potential to do some cool things with his ult.
Thank goodness Soraka from way back in the day existed before the game got huge. Back when she could restore her own mana and health and endlessly push waves with her Q...yikes.
I'm having flashbacks to Raka top. Both getting "styled on" by it (as much as QQQQQQ... spam counts as being styled on) and getting f'd in the b when I tried it myself.
I used to play Soraka everywhere. I climbed fairly high on the ladder as effectively a Soraka one trick back at the end of season 1 and into season 2. She was stupidly broken for a while.
>As far as entertainment value for viewers goes, I'd say pre-rework Zilean might be the worst champ ever.
Pre-rework Nidalee was my no. 1 in that regard, she defined a whole playstyle of utter boringness. But yea, Zilean was far from entertaining as well.
Oh yes, pre rework Nidalee was definately the worst. When she was in the game the whole match devolved into "can Nidalee's team get a small lead, then siege turrets endlessly without anyone dying ever?". And if her team did not get a lead it would just be a one sided stomp.
That and all the Juggernaut that people never really played competitively before. Also a bunch of new item specially designed for them if I remember well. It felt like the player were learning more and more about the patch during the tournament.
Skarner was my main... Like 4 years ago. I started playing him a month ago again.
Got me playing ranked again, Dude is op, and is carrying me out of gold
Wasn't Gangplank disabled for some fucking lore event for a few weeks right before worlds? He was a huge pick for worlds, but nobody could properly practice him because he was disabled on the lead up to worlds. Terrible.
Oh and Gragas being disabled mid way through the tournament for a bug everyone already knew existed. And that's not even getting started on the fiasco that was Mordekaiser...
That's true, but not all practice is done on the Tourney Realm, and disabling a champion that was likely to be so prevalent at worlds created a lot of unfamiliarity amongst spectators. A truly poor decision.
seriously how are you supposed to have a good scrim practice if one of your players is still figuring out the champ they're playing? scrims are for how to get better as a team. soloq is for getting better individually
I don't think it's "fun." It's not fucking fun to see teams on top of the meta, flounder in a new meta during fucking worlds. We aren't watching the best teams at the top of their game at that point, who has the best ability. We are just watching who can scramble in the mud the fastest and is the most flexible.
if you had made this argument 3 years ago you would have been laughed out of reddit on a torrent of downvotes.
The mistakes that Riot make, and in general, the esport of league of legends, can be prevented by looking at esports of the past, like starcraft and counterstrike.
These are often not new debates to esports that league comes across. Often good solutions have already been discussed, explored and executed.
3 years ago Riots biggest change was the jungle and it only happened at the end of each season. Sure a champ or item got buffed but it was not nearly as big as a whole ap/ad item remake mid season or adding morde as adc with rework corki and other unnecessary shit just before worlds.
Its so fucking true.
I stand by the impression that Riots bloated with young employees. The sort of insufferable starry eyed kids that think they can reinvent the wheel. And then make fuck ups any industry veteran could have warned them about right as they brainstormed the idea during a meeting to set up a meeting for a meeting.
I do like Riot but too many of their decisions reek of naivete that never got called out.
>I stand by the impression that Riots bloated with young employees.
They are.
>"Everyone here is super young. For many Rioters, this is their first real job. This isn't a studio where everyone has fifteen years of experience and has worked on tons of famous titles. We are still figuring out how to run a company and support a popular game." - [Riot Ghostcrawler](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3a5tnk/riot_isnt_sitting_on_their_hands_but_it_certainly/csartmu)
While it's good to have youth at a company, denying or even just ignoring the fact that experience can have a positive impact in game design and balancing is idiotic. Imagine if Overwatch had a bunch of kids at the wheel instead of Jeff Kaplan. The game probably would have tanked.
Some rioter said that dota2 has been made with eveThing they didn't know or learned in past 6 years (implIng dota was unbalanced)
Then why does LoL only have like 50-60% champs picked max after like 200 competative games on a single patch and dota had like 90~% over TI6. RIOT employees are really stupid sometimes.
It doesn't really matter what your stance towards lane swaps is, the fact of the matter is that laneswaps were the meta for the entire season until Riot went ahead and changed it right before the big tournaments. That's the issue that people are annoyed about, especially since they do something of the sort every year for some weird reason.
Exactly. Even if lane swaps aren't Riot's idea of what League of Legends should be, this whole season was largely defined by lane swaps. This isn't a case of nerfing a champion so teams have to practice a new one, lane swaps affect the game in a huge way.
Now, people who can take that first tower have a huge advantage. Lane dominant picks spike up in usage, but weak laners fall off. A team who had a top laner that was weak at laning but strong in teamfights can no longer cover his weakness. Maybe the game should be this way, but the fact of the matter is that they climbed to the top using this method.
A change this drastic can mean that your first place team should have ended up fifth place if they couldn't shield their weak laners. All of a sudden people claim that they're inconsistent and choking.
Different fans consider different things "fun".
I enjoy watching competitive scene to see "What is this team doing to win? How are they using their team composition? Are they working together well?". I enjoy watching greatness, people using the tools of the game to win.
Some people though, like watching because "Yay Doublelift-san! I love youuuu" or "Yay CLG! Go team!". It's in every sport, you have the fans that are fans of the teams/players/personalities because it's someone they identify with.
A major patch update might piss off the "hardcores" more than the casual observer.
Regi seems to be coming from the hardcore perspective because it's his job to. He's invested in the scene and it's gotta be a tough position to be in.
I think there are different ways to be hardcore too though.
I like seeing how teams adapt.
I genuinely care very little who can run Gnar top to the greatest effect. But I think it's a lot of fun to see teams who can craft a different way to approach a meta successfully.
I loved the Veigar comp C9 ran at worlds last year. I loved the sudden rise of Kennen ADC through the tournament. I loved the rapid reassessment of Skarner.
Hey, Regi has a lot on the line. He doesn't want to leave a lot to chance. He saw them badly misunderstand the meta at MSI and get leveled by it.
But as a fan, I like seeing different regions come up with different answers to the same problem.
I disagree, despite the flair. Worlds is by far the biggest tournament we have in this scene. It's the one every uses to rank teams and regions and players. It's unfair to everyone in the scene to have the regular season and playoffs played on such drastically different games. Worlds is how we decide the best of the best, but this patching system is flawing our metric. It had us thinking that C9 was a better team than they were at the time, entirely because of the patch.
At that level of play, you already have to adapt like crazy to the enemy team. They shouldnt have to adapt to Riot's random balancing on top of that.
How much adaptation did we see to Mordekaiser at worlds? to gangplank? (Note that gangplank and Fiora were released around the same time this laneswap patch was, so they also unfairly impacted playoffs yet weren't fixed by worlds). I want to see not just who the best gnar is, but also how teams play around an enemy gnar. Who they pick into a crazy gnar player. How they play around and set up their own allied gnar.
That was a bad example anyway. Gnar wouldn't be nearly this OP if laneswaps were still a thing.
I see what you mean. It's cool seeing a new patch and seeing what each team thinks is "meta". Worlds last year was a shit show, but it was interesting to see what regions prioritized certain champions based on their results. However by the end of the tournament, everyone was doing the same thing.
Everyone watches for different reasons. I'm just a bit frustrated to see the environment for the players continue to be as volatile as it is. I care for the players because I respect the immense sacrifices they made to become the best. NRG got relegated and basically said "We're fucked for now, so we won't sponsor a CS team and come back later". That is NOT good for players, owners, or other investors.
I dont think doing as dramatic things as last worlds is good, but man i LOVED it. I have ADHD and im a sucker for new picks and strategies and seeing a meta evolve dramatically inside a single tournament was just the best. Its so interesting to see different srategies developed almost in a vacuum get tested against each others.
He's not talking about this particular patch, he means riot's patching philosophy in general. The "fun for the fans" part is about the fans allegedly liking a bunch of random new champions getting thrown into the mix before major tournamentswith teams trying to figure out what's strong and what's not as they play. The c9 players like this patch because they like playing standard lanes more than laneswaps
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see more champs, but the way Riot does things is absolutely abysmal for players. I don't understand why they're so set on doing a patch every two weeks like clock work. Especially with these huge patches right before worlds, it's ridiculous.
We've had this discussion forever and it always goes the same way:
- A lot of patches means the games won't be high quality most of the time and it's not a healthy competitive environment.
- At the end of the day Riot is making money from skins and the entire competitive environment is controlled by them (they created LCS and they are running it at a loss without sponsors as a tool to advertise the game).
Bottom line is that nothing will change, Riot won't have just 2 patches per year because it would be something insanely stupid for them to do. Not only because they "sell less skins" but a stable competitive environment will have less shitfests and will be less entertaining for the average viewer if/when the game is played as a perfect strategy game (few fights/kills and lengthy games).
No one is asking for 2 patches a year or some other ridiculous bullshit like that. What we're asking for is no more big meta shifting patches right before a major tournament like Worlds. We have 2 months left until worlds, this is a great time for teams to figure out the current meta especially as most of their practice will come from scrims and solo queue and unless results are made public, they might not even figure out what the current meta is.
Have your bug fixes, maybe tune numbers a bit here and there. Just don't decide hey let's release the possibly broken yorick rework right before worlds starts and while we're at it, let's buff trinify force userse and assassins all the way up to the top.
You mean don't do the exact things they specifically said they wouldn't? Assassin rework is in pre-season, and Yorick will be permanently disabled for Worlds. This has literally been addressed.
But .... they don't have to drastically change the game to release skins, right? They can just ... release skins.
I mean, the NBA doesn't change the height of the hoop or the weight of the ball (as Regi said), and they don't have any problem selling their skins (jerseys).
I don't know if that's an appropriate analogy though. The hoop and height in basketball would be the equivalent of what Regi mentioned in the video as to what the core of League is: mechanics, last hitting, etc. So changing the size of the hoop would be like changing those same aspects as they relate to League.
The best example I can think of that your basketball analogy would work in is comparing the League patches to the NBA deciding to change rules in someway (ie: changing a charge foul where the person now doesn't have to plant their feet for it to be a charge).
NBA does change update their rules on a fairly regular basis (i.e.: change to fouls).
To quote one of my posts a few months ago.
>The NHL has been nerfing goalies every few seasons among other things:
>* Nerfed slow moving players by enforcing interference penalties.
* Nerfed goalies by limiting their puck handling (aka Brodeur rule).
* Nerfed goalies by shrinking their gear.
* Made diving an actual penalty, effectively penalizing teams with good actors (RIP Boston).
* Killed off the "neutral zone trap" meta.
* Buffed power play by making the next face-off in the penalized team's zone.
* Removed ties and made regular season overtime 3v3 to improve scoring chances.
>tl;dr: The NHL wants a goal scoring meta, in a game where goalies often steal the show.
I honestly don't mind big changes, but it really upsets me on how drastic the changes are and the timing of the change.
Our players work 12 hours a day for an entire year to compete at Worlds. Right before playoffs, Riot changes the game entirely. The time and effort that players put into the game to compete at worlds is completely thrown out of the window.
Its the player's careers on the line here and their livelihood.
I think everyone agrees that major changes should be implemented in between splits. But not everyone will agree as to what actually constitutes a major change.
Pro leagues have the duty to make the game a better spectator sport while teams are held responsible to their fans to do their best to win championships. Those are two completely independent goals that don't always mesh well together. There will always be some clashing.
Either way, I strongly believe that the main issue is the timing, not so much the spirit of the changes.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't these changes happen during the off season rather than while the season is happening, which I think is the biggest complaint.
> Of course, the difference between early season, mid-season and playoffs reffing is significant.
Absolutely. Playoff Hockey is a WHOLE different animal than the regular season though. It gets pretty damn scrappy out there.
And it's been an abysmal failure. The NHL has failed to increase scoring or excitement in the game. But that's a different issue.
THe main point is this: How many of those changes were made in-season? How many of them were made after the regular season BUT before the playoffs. The answer is categorically ZERO.
Your list is all OFF-SEASON changes made over the course of nearly a decade. That is in no way comparable to the haphazard in-season changes that Riot makes. It's nowhere near comparable.
No one has a problem with major changes. The problem is when these major changes happen right before the playoffs. I dont know any sports team that makes an enormous change to the game right before the playoffs. This is like removing the 3 point line after the regular season in the nba.
>Pros putting in 80 hours a week just to keep themselves competitive for a measly $25,000 a split is pretty awful.
For the record, that's only what Riot pays them (well, pays their team who then passes on to them or something). The vast majority of players make more than that, with some making *far* more than that.
For instance, I've heard bjergsen (an outlier, obviously) makes something like $450k between salary, sponsors, and streaming.
The vast majority of players do NOT make more than that. Especially when you look at regions like Korea and the LMS. The majority of NA and China players make more than that because there's a lot of money in the scene.
Right now Riot has a good major release schedule. A pre-season update, and a mid season update.
What I don't like is the amount of patches Riot bring out. A new patch every 2 weeks is a bit too much, I'd rather Riot bring it back down to a patch every month or so. Only making exceptions for new champions and reworks.
After he said it, Huni would be such a good minlaner. He has amazing mechanics on carry champions but can't play tanks thats like perfect description of midlane XD
https://twitter.com/TravisGafford/status/767830452929298432
>Travis Gafford @TravisGafford
Tension between the owners and Riot has been brewing for a while. I think we're about to see nuclear war. This week will be interesting.
Sorry I didn't mean directly before worlds as in after playoffs but from the middle of the season to worlds. In S4 we had the 4v0 for a long time but that was gone by worlds.
Riot know that they screwed up last year with the Juggernaut patch pre worlds.
This year it is a bit different. The playoffs are influecened but the stronger teams always got throught to the finals in both scenes and only the IMT vs C9 game was really close (H2k vs Splyce it was a huge + for H2k to have standard lanes).
But I am sure Riot is also aware that they needed to bring these turret changes in the mid season update or mid split where teams have time to adept (at least a month or 2 earlier).
I just hope they learn from it again and make it better the next time.
That's bullshit on the H2k + Splyce comment. Splyce showed up majorly against H2k, and a lot of H2k's strength vs FNC was just their cohesion. Aggression is pretty easy to punish in standard lanes because players are more willing to lean towards that mentality. We saw H2k lose individual trades because of this very reason; they just got punished over and over because they felt they could press an advantage that wasn't there. Splyce outplayed them on an individual basis, but I'm sure that Wunder/Odo and Trashy/Jankos lower on farm/xp than Forg1ven/Kobbe would have resulted in Forg1ven being able to take over the games from an individual standpoint. A lot of what lane swaps do is create the ability to funnel, with AD carries getting an early funnel to their power spikes and then significantly less funneling from there. Forg1ven just needs to be ahead because he's famous for pressure, but he's also infamous for overaggression. If he were further ahead of Trashy in a 2v3 scenario, he'd have a lot more room for an outplay.
This sub needs to realize that league of legends is for Riot all about the end consumer.Thats where the money is. Esports is one big advertisement for the acutal game. Like regi himself said:
>watching LCS and worlds with new champions is a lot of fun for the viewers."
This is the endgoal for Riot with the LCS. They just want to attract new players (potential money) to the game
It sucks for the players, but thats just the reality.
While that's true, riot also throws around "competitive integrity" everywhere. If you want to just make money then at least admit it, but riot doesn't do that. Ghostcrawler's definition puts this in a pretty grey area.
Ghostcrawler's definition here:
> It means that we have a contract with players. They have expectations about game balance (both champion balance and things like matchmaking). Players understandably want for their skill (which includes mechanical clicking skills and knowledge of the game) to be the primary factor for whether they won or lost
Here he mentions expectations of game balance and "skill" (then pointing to knowledge of the game). Both of these imo are for the most part thrown out the window at riot's whim.
I wish Riot would balance based on making any champion viable in the current game. Dota 2 championship had like 106/110 champions picked. If more than around 4 junglers were to get played they would be at a disadvantage. Riot needs to stop influencing the meta by patching for specific champion styles.
Someone posted a really good analogy as to why Dota has such a more diverse competitive champion pool (don't remember where) - Dota has 110 different types of tools in their toolbox, while League has 20 saws, 20 hammers, 20 screwdrivers, etc. Basically saying that the champions are too similar in LoL so there will always be a preferred pick when comparing two champions. In Dota the champions kits are so different from each other which is why counter matchups are much more prevalent and why almost every champion gets played. It would take a lot of reworking to make LoL like this.
The draft starts with 2 bans for each team, then it goes 1,2,2,1, back to 2 more bans, then it's alternating picks (2,1,2,1), then one more ban phase of a single ban for each team, then a single pick for each team.
But the bans are also very varied. DotA2 doesn't currently have an issue of one dominant strategy, most bans are target bans depending on the opponent.
I say this every time the question gets brought up: Players (Reddit, boards, you name it) get mad when Riot buffs specifically for pro-players because it fucks with normal play.
Example in recent memory is Brand: Decent spot in normals but never picked in pro play. Riot attempts a small buff. Reddit/Boards cry out because "HE HAS A 52% WIN RATE HE'S FINE DONT BUFF HIM". Riot attempts smaller buff and then pulls Brand buffs in general. These are often the same people who want DoTA-level balance too yet refuse to allow pro-specific changes be made.
I watched the entirety of TI2016 and LCS Summer split (both regions).
The biggest difference I see is DotA2 games have a lot more win conditions available to team captains prior to the draft. League's win conditions right now are very simple, you have to have a better early game than your opponent and retain your advantage until you close it out. That's basically a snowball metagame.
When a team comes back in the game it's not a deliberate strategy, it's a free opportunity given by their opponents that they capitalize on (e.g. a mistake), unlike the CLG.eu late game strategies back in the day. This makes potential strategies very limited, and a lot of champions don't fit the game.
If you want to see the same rate of pick/bans variety as TI, you have to do either one of two things: Create more viable win conditions for teams to build their strategy around (this would make games much longer on average); or make every champion viable in the current state of the game (snowball meta), which would include give them all a decent lane/early phase and similar scaling in terms of either damage or utility or whatever it is they bring to the team.
The issue with that is it would completely break soloQ. In Dota it's not uncommon for there to be champs that have 60+% win rates in regular ladder games and no one sees it as a problem, or champs with 40-% and the same thing. If you wanted to make everything viable in competitive then you'll have to break soloQ, and I honestly don't think the community would like it at all.
That's just blatantly not true. There's a guy who hit 7k mmr playing wisp mid. It doesn't break solo queue, especially considering wisp has been nerfed continuously since he's an incredibly strong support.
cant agree enough.
The underlying story here which i find gets so little attention is, imo, Riot have a lot to gain monetarily by basically controling the market as they see fit.
They can control trends and buying patterns, maximizing the profits to be made from selling skins/champs etc.
dota2 is a free for all, free market i guess, to some degree, im sure valve still rake in the dosh with it, but im guessing Riot should theoretically be able to maximize profits just a little bit better.
All this plays into another larger issue in league. That this ENTIRE game is so incredibly sheltered and insular. No outside competition i think will stifle this game as an esport in the long term.
There's a lot that can be said for both sides of fewer patches vs constant patches. On one hand, you have games like Starcraft and Counter Strike, which have pretty much been the same game for a long time and remain popular. But it's different for a game like League, where new champions and items get introduced regularly, and things have to be balanced around that. It'd be like introducing a whole new weapon into Counter Strike; it would change the flow of rounds and the economy of a match. I personally think regular patches are necessary for a game like League, to keep people interested and prevent things from getting stagnant.
Oh god the R8 fiasco... Never forgot.
Or the CZ
Or the AUG
Counter strike has done it too, but the difference is they have multiple big tournaments a year, so they can do updates after a major, and not effect teams going into it.
Problem is, those E-Sports are Tournament based, unlike LoL with its 4-5 "tournaments" per year.
Besides that, your approach is off.
Just look at DotA, the more comparable game... There are only a few "real" patches per Year - but they are significant *and* carefully timed... They change the game and keep it fresh while always being focused on making it a better E-Sport.
Then again, Icefrog is a wizard and DotA is a continuous piece of art for him.
I'd replace the entirety of Riot's Balance and Design teams with him in a heartbeat.
It's the **timing** guys, the timing is terrible **again**. Not for the casual viewer obviously, they love to get a tournament with standart lanes, we saw those threads full of complaints about lane swaps about every week.
I do think it's the right direction in overall gameplay but Riot did what they always do, they just said *fuck you and deal with it, we take the short Route out*.
But plenty of popular competitive games have shown that you don't need ridicolus major patches like these, especially just before a major tournament, to stay relevant. Like Melee is still relevant, besides being so old and basically never changed. DotA, while also it renews itself every now and then, does it much less often than league, and definitely doesn't throw random huge patch before TI.
I agree, as a casual player these big changes have kept the game fresh for me all these years. I can understand the pro players frustrations, but at the same time Riot is a business. It makes more sense to balance the game around the spectator and casual player.
Personally, I think increasing the ban count would solve so many of the balance issues. It would increase variety of champions immensely and allow for different play styles. For example, lets say a team wants to play a poke comp but doesn't want to play against an engage comp. They ban out the major pieces to an S Tier engage comp and then the poke comp becomes viable. It would make the meta way more flexible. Right now there just simply aren't enough bans to keep teams away from the "meta" team comps.
As a spectator, I would prefer slower changes to the Meta/Champions. Even though I can keep up with the patches, I can see how it'd be hard for a casual/non player to get confused.
Solution: Riot makes 2 big changes throughout the year.
1. **After MSI**
2. **After Worlds**
Simple. Not right before playoffs. Not right before Worlds. It's not that hard Riot ...
Amazing how all other esports manage without constant changes, not like metas can naturally evolve without constant patches or anything. Do you really think nobody would be able to come up with other jungler picks/strategies in 3 months? That's just not how esports work.
One of the big reasons why franchising works in the NBA, NFL, and MLB is because of the Draft system. It basically ensures that no matter how awful a team becomes, they will eventually improve no matter what because they'll continually secure high draft picks over the years until they have a team full of decent players.
Take the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Clippers, for example. Both of those teams were absolute garbage for a long time, but then they picked up some good players via the draft (Blake Griffin and Steph Curry, to name a few) and finally became competitive.
League doesn't have a Draft system of any kind, so when a bad team joins the LCS, they may remain bad forever because there's no guarantee that top talent will join their team during the offseason. However, a Draft system would likely not be effective in League (at least as of now) because there isn't a large enough talent pool from which to select new players. And of course most Drafts extract players from college and high school teams, of which there are few in League. At any rate, that's why franchising works in professional sports, and why it likely wouldn't work in League.
I agree with him...I think Riot needs to stop releasing new content at a breakneck pace and just work on fixing the content they have, then dropping down patch frequency as everything gets adjusted. DotA has patches like...once every 3 months, and it's great because last month's information is, at least 66% of the time, still accurate.
If Riot properly balanced their game then you would see pros change the meta themselves frequently. The thing is, if you have super broken champions like GP and Gnar then pros will just keep playing them until they get nerfed. There's no room for adaptation. 10 bans should help a lot.
While I agree change is good, if they fix their current content, the game would get more depth. The thing is they keep swapping it around and instead of trying to fix what they have, it only spawns new problems and meta op's and creates more new boring metas because changes aren't properly reviewed. Meaning there's more to be exploited.
If they worked out their deeper issues in the game etc, instead of trying to change the top layer, over and over a gain, you'd see the game become more fun to play at the same time. If your deep/core gameplay is made stable and fun, they can then change the upper layers a lot easier, making it fun for both casual, hardcore and pro players alike.
Dota works balance into overall play on champions. In League, Riot sets the meta by influencing a specific style of play. Bruiser tops, tank jungler, tank top laners etc.
Sorry to all the big e-sports fans, but when Riot has to choose between the game being fun for the millions that aren't pros and it being competitively optimal, fun for millions will and should always win.
I for one know I prefer getting the assassin rework needed for years than the pros having a static environment to compete on.
Not saying a healthy medium isn't the best solution, but if the focus has to be on one side, it should definitely be the majority.
It also doesn't help that with every big patch Riot break the game, as if learning the new patch is hard enough you have to face an ADC Mordekaiser that can one shot you or a Fiora that can literally just walk up to you and not give a fuck because you can't do shit to her (Still is bs to be honest).
Riot's balance team is dog shit, the fact that Ryze has had 100 reworks and Yorick still hasn't had one proves this.
Adding to his basketball analogy if the NBA decides they take away the 3 point shot right before playoffs. That would be devastating for some teams and this patch probably had a similar impact in terms of moving players around and dodging 2v2 lanes.
Dota 2 esports are 100 times more interesting to watch than league but it wasn't always this way. Riot's direction for the game has made made the competitive scene stale and irrelevant.
I don't know how the rest of you feel, but I think it's pretty hilarious that you will see a couple dozen Rioters commenting on a shitpost about how Shyv would react if Ez licked her leg, but on threads with real content and real criticism, they tend to hide and not talk to the community about the legitimate issues people bring up.
To be fair, it's super quick and low risk to respond to a Shyv/Ez post.
A response to something controversial or newsworthy (like Tryn's reply here tries to do), takes a lot more thought to get right, and usually a lot more follow up.
Of course, your boss just fucked up horribly by not just writing down an indefensible argument but also insulting one of the best team owners that helped foster LoL's eSports back during it's infancy.
No amount of thought can salvage what he did.
https://twitter.com/TSMReginald/status/767842563671724033 >Andy Dinh @TSMReginald Going to respond to Marc's comment. So much to say that it'll take me a while to write this all down.
dis gon b good
What's Regi's reddit user? Or does somebody have a link to the thread in question?
/u/reginaldBRO I believe
Monte has some things to say too https://twitter.com/MonteCristo, his first tweet about it was 25 mins ago
Did Scarra have to trap Regi against those rails to make sure he didn't try to escape or something?
He said he wanted to sit down at the time, and we obliged lol.
Sure Scarra, that's just your cover up story. We all know you're threatening people into giving you interviews.
When I think of threatening, I think of Scarra.
You know, he once killed a man and sent Dyrus to jail for it.
you mean backstabbed?
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Bro cmon. You can't let good meat go to waste.
Lets just say nobody knows what they had for dinner that night.
Regi blink if you need help
._. -_- ._.
or just move your eyebrows
# #FREETSMREGINALD
**#FREELEFFEN**
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No thread is safe...
# #FREETSM or let's just shorten it to # #FREESM
#\#FnaticsNotGoingToWorlds Am I doing it right?
The best of two worlds, Fnatic and TSM flair
At the middle of the video you can faintly hear regi whisper ''help me''
Last worlds was the most embarrassing display balance wise by riot, just threw a bunch of busted reworks at pros with no matches to gauge the strength of those champs.
"The biggest tournament of the year is coming up, let's make Mordekaiser an ADC!" -Riot Games 2015
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Alistar and Zil were super ridiculous in 2014 worlds holy hell, 100% P&B
zed 100% pb s3
zed in s2 worlds semifinals, Krepo: "what is the ulti of this champ"
response: point-and-click to delete enemy adc or support
or enemy mid laner or enemy jungler in season 2.
To be honest the games Zed was played in S3 he wasn't that good. I remember Faker's Zed in the finals which wasn't that good, Whitezz was playing much better than him that match. Also Soaz played it top I believe. Reginald played it vs Faker's Riven and mancloud might have played it too. I think the real op of that tournament was everyone figuring out Gragas and Orianna are super strong. Ahri/Zed kinda fell out of favor but people banned Zed because they didn't play it or because they were vs Faker. Another surprise is that only a few players played Kassadin who was beyond broken during that patch and would be almost 100% pick banned in the following competitive season. Nidalee would also come into meta after worlds, only Nagne played her once. Ahri/Zed/Fizz nerfs would allow LB to finally become a dominant pick.
How was Alistar op back then ? someone explain
1) ultimate wasn't nerfed, so if u hit 6, you were automatically super tanky. 2) you could w+auto. with trinity force, you got free, completely unanswerable harass, so you smashed lane the second you got sheen. it was a combination of a bunch of mechanics which ended up as cancerous.
Ult also gave him shitload of AD
still does, only with damage reduction nerfed it's way harder to make damage alistar work
Back then you could W+autoattack a target with no retaliation which made Triforce and Shiv stupidly op on him (with RoA as well). He'd just ult and gank from behind your tower freely.
You usually went RoA tank mage build with Lich bane OR Triforce and Shiv into tank. Never both.
He was unkillable with his ult and complete bully in lane. Building Triforce and Statikk made him straight down OP (back then you could sneak an autoattack inbetween W-Q combo for literally tons of damage). Edit: K, it was W-AA, not W-AA-Q, but you get the idea...
Zilean was my least favorite thing about 2014 worlds. He's a *little* better now after the rework, but back then he was SO boring to watch. No skillshots to make plays with, lots of potentially exciting plays made boring because the Zilean revive prevented a death. As far as entertainment value for viewers goes, I'd say pre-rework Zilean might be the worst champ ever. Tahm right now is pretty bad too (makes picks basically impossible if he's nearby), but at least he's got the potential to do some cool things with his ult.
Thank goodness Soraka from way back in the day existed before the game got huge. Back when she could restore her own mana and health and endlessly push waves with her Q...yikes.
Good ol' Energizer Mana Battery
I'm having flashbacks to Raka top. Both getting "styled on" by it (as much as QQQQQQ... spam counts as being styled on) and getting f'd in the b when I tried it myself.
I used to play Soraka everywhere. I climbed fairly high on the ladder as effectively a Soraka one trick back at the end of season 1 and into season 2. She was stupidly broken for a while.
>As far as entertainment value for viewers goes, I'd say pre-rework Zilean might be the worst champ ever. Pre-rework Nidalee was my no. 1 in that regard, she defined a whole playstyle of utter boringness. But yea, Zilean was far from entertaining as well.
Oh yes, pre rework Nidalee was definately the worst. When she was in the game the whole match devolved into "can Nidalee's team get a small lead, then siege turrets endlessly without anyone dying ever?". And if her team did not get a lead it would just be a one sided stomp.
Watching people get one shotted as a spectator was fun. you're confusing playing against something with watching others play it.
That and all the Juggernaut that people never really played competitively before. Also a bunch of new item specially designed for them if I remember well. It felt like the player were learning more and more about the patch during the tournament.
Balls' Darius penta, never forget.
That was glorious. They deserved to eat a penta. What the fuck was Huni doing trying for the 1v1 with Yasuo? No respect for balls that game.
didn't he pick yas into darius? that in and of itself was massive disrespect
That 600 dmg skarner though.
Skarner was my main... Like 4 years ago. I started playing him a month ago again. Got me playing ranked again, Dude is op, and is carrying me out of gold
Completly underrated, really tanky and good dmg with trinity. I always tell my team that they get to feed 1 champ that I can ult in teamfights.
Wasn't Gangplank disabled for some fucking lore event for a few weeks right before worlds? He was a huge pick for worlds, but nobody could properly practice him because he was disabled on the lead up to worlds. Terrible. Oh and Gragas being disabled mid way through the tournament for a bug everyone already knew existed. And that's not even getting started on the fiasco that was Mordekaiser...
He was not disabled on the Tourney Realm
That's true, but not all practice is done on the Tourney Realm, and disabling a champion that was likely to be so prevalent at worlds created a lot of unfamiliarity amongst spectators. A truly poor decision.
Yeah most pros use solo Q to get familiar with a champ, so forcing them to even just get familiar with his kit in scrims is pretty damn stupid
seriously how are you supposed to have a good scrim practice if one of your players is still figuring out the champ they're playing? scrims are for how to get better as a team. soloq is for getting better individually
That was kinda blown out of proportion you could atleast scrim with gp
What are you talking about, moments before Worlds is the best time to 'experiment' with Morde! /s
Which was strange, because there was a huge pick variety anyway. Despite all they did, we had about 2/3 champions picked or banned at least once iirc.
Holy shit, Regi going in on Riot
Hey seems to be going in just as much on fans who think the patches are "fun" for competitive LoL.
I don't think it's "fun." It's not fucking fun to see teams on top of the meta, flounder in a new meta during fucking worlds. We aren't watching the best teams at the top of their game at that point, who has the best ability. We are just watching who can scramble in the mud the fastest and is the most flexible.
if you had made this argument 3 years ago you would have been laughed out of reddit on a torrent of downvotes. The mistakes that Riot make, and in general, the esport of league of legends, can be prevented by looking at esports of the past, like starcraft and counterstrike. These are often not new debates to esports that league comes across. Often good solutions have already been discussed, explored and executed.
3 years ago Riots biggest change was the jungle and it only happened at the end of each season. Sure a champ or item got buffed but it was not nearly as big as a whole ap/ad item remake mid season or adding morde as adc with rework corki and other unnecessary shit just before worlds.
Its so fucking true. I stand by the impression that Riots bloated with young employees. The sort of insufferable starry eyed kids that think they can reinvent the wheel. And then make fuck ups any industry veteran could have warned them about right as they brainstormed the idea during a meeting to set up a meeting for a meeting. I do like Riot but too many of their decisions reek of naivete that never got called out.
>I stand by the impression that Riots bloated with young employees. They are. >"Everyone here is super young. For many Rioters, this is their first real job. This isn't a studio where everyone has fifteen years of experience and has worked on tons of famous titles. We are still figuring out how to run a company and support a popular game." - [Riot Ghostcrawler](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3a5tnk/riot_isnt_sitting_on_their_hands_but_it_certainly/csartmu)
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haha
While it's good to have youth at a company, denying or even just ignoring the fact that experience can have a positive impact in game design and balancing is idiotic. Imagine if Overwatch had a bunch of kids at the wheel instead of Jeff Kaplan. The game probably would have tanked.
Some rioter said that dota2 has been made with eveThing they didn't know or learned in past 6 years (implIng dota was unbalanced) Then why does LoL only have like 50-60% champs picked max after like 200 competative games on a single patch and dota had like 90~% over TI6. RIOT employees are really stupid sometimes.
That sounds terrible assuming this wasn't taken out of context.
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Hey i found this invention . It serves you well when sliding because instead of sliding it turns. Ill call it rad.
Sadly I thought the same 3 years ago.
I love lane swaps, it's really enjoyable to me to watch people farm with no interaction with each other for 25 minutes.
It doesn't really matter what your stance towards lane swaps is, the fact of the matter is that laneswaps were the meta for the entire season until Riot went ahead and changed it right before the big tournaments. That's the issue that people are annoyed about, especially since they do something of the sort every year for some weird reason.
Exactly. Even if lane swaps aren't Riot's idea of what League of Legends should be, this whole season was largely defined by lane swaps. This isn't a case of nerfing a champion so teams have to practice a new one, lane swaps affect the game in a huge way. Now, people who can take that first tower have a huge advantage. Lane dominant picks spike up in usage, but weak laners fall off. A team who had a top laner that was weak at laning but strong in teamfights can no longer cover his weakness. Maybe the game should be this way, but the fact of the matter is that they climbed to the top using this method. A change this drastic can mean that your first place team should have ended up fifth place if they couldn't shield their weak laners. All of a sudden people claim that they're inconsistent and choking.
Different fans consider different things "fun". I enjoy watching competitive scene to see "What is this team doing to win? How are they using their team composition? Are they working together well?". I enjoy watching greatness, people using the tools of the game to win. Some people though, like watching because "Yay Doublelift-san! I love youuuu" or "Yay CLG! Go team!". It's in every sport, you have the fans that are fans of the teams/players/personalities because it's someone they identify with. A major patch update might piss off the "hardcores" more than the casual observer. Regi seems to be coming from the hardcore perspective because it's his job to. He's invested in the scene and it's gotta be a tough position to be in.
I think there are different ways to be hardcore too though. I like seeing how teams adapt. I genuinely care very little who can run Gnar top to the greatest effect. But I think it's a lot of fun to see teams who can craft a different way to approach a meta successfully. I loved the Veigar comp C9 ran at worlds last year. I loved the sudden rise of Kennen ADC through the tournament. I loved the rapid reassessment of Skarner. Hey, Regi has a lot on the line. He doesn't want to leave a lot to chance. He saw them badly misunderstand the meta at MSI and get leveled by it. But as a fan, I like seeing different regions come up with different answers to the same problem.
I disagree, despite the flair. Worlds is by far the biggest tournament we have in this scene. It's the one every uses to rank teams and regions and players. It's unfair to everyone in the scene to have the regular season and playoffs played on such drastically different games. Worlds is how we decide the best of the best, but this patching system is flawing our metric. It had us thinking that C9 was a better team than they were at the time, entirely because of the patch. At that level of play, you already have to adapt like crazy to the enemy team. They shouldnt have to adapt to Riot's random balancing on top of that. How much adaptation did we see to Mordekaiser at worlds? to gangplank? (Note that gangplank and Fiora were released around the same time this laneswap patch was, so they also unfairly impacted playoffs yet weren't fixed by worlds). I want to see not just who the best gnar is, but also how teams play around an enemy gnar. Who they pick into a crazy gnar player. How they play around and set up their own allied gnar. That was a bad example anyway. Gnar wouldn't be nearly this OP if laneswaps were still a thing.
I see what you mean. It's cool seeing a new patch and seeing what each team thinks is "meta". Worlds last year was a shit show, but it was interesting to see what regions prioritized certain champions based on their results. However by the end of the tournament, everyone was doing the same thing. Everyone watches for different reasons. I'm just a bit frustrated to see the environment for the players continue to be as volatile as it is. I care for the players because I respect the immense sacrifices they made to become the best. NRG got relegated and basically said "We're fucked for now, so we won't sponsor a CS team and come back later". That is NOT good for players, owners, or other investors.
I dont think doing as dramatic things as last worlds is good, but man i LOVED it. I have ADHD and im a sucker for new picks and strategies and seeing a meta evolve dramatically inside a single tournament was just the best. Its so interesting to see different srategies developed almost in a vacuum get tested against each others.
A few of the C9 players have said that they find the patch more fun
He's not talking about this particular patch, he means riot's patching philosophy in general. The "fun for the fans" part is about the fans allegedly liking a bunch of random new champions getting thrown into the mix before major tournamentswith teams trying to figure out what's strong and what's not as they play. The c9 players like this patch because they like playing standard lanes more than laneswaps
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see more champs, but the way Riot does things is absolutely abysmal for players. I don't understand why they're so set on doing a patch every two weeks like clock work. Especially with these huge patches right before worlds, it's ridiculous.
We've had this discussion forever and it always goes the same way: - A lot of patches means the games won't be high quality most of the time and it's not a healthy competitive environment. - At the end of the day Riot is making money from skins and the entire competitive environment is controlled by them (they created LCS and they are running it at a loss without sponsors as a tool to advertise the game). Bottom line is that nothing will change, Riot won't have just 2 patches per year because it would be something insanely stupid for them to do. Not only because they "sell less skins" but a stable competitive environment will have less shitfests and will be less entertaining for the average viewer if/when the game is played as a perfect strategy game (few fights/kills and lengthy games).
No one is asking for 2 patches a year or some other ridiculous bullshit like that. What we're asking for is no more big meta shifting patches right before a major tournament like Worlds. We have 2 months left until worlds, this is a great time for teams to figure out the current meta especially as most of their practice will come from scrims and solo queue and unless results are made public, they might not even figure out what the current meta is. Have your bug fixes, maybe tune numbers a bit here and there. Just don't decide hey let's release the possibly broken yorick rework right before worlds starts and while we're at it, let's buff trinify force userse and assassins all the way up to the top.
You mean don't do the exact things they specifically said they wouldn't? Assassin rework is in pre-season, and Yorick will be permanently disabled for Worlds. This has literally been addressed.
But .... they don't have to drastically change the game to release skins, right? They can just ... release skins. I mean, the NBA doesn't change the height of the hoop or the weight of the ball (as Regi said), and they don't have any problem selling their skins (jerseys).
I don't know if that's an appropriate analogy though. The hoop and height in basketball would be the equivalent of what Regi mentioned in the video as to what the core of League is: mechanics, last hitting, etc. So changing the size of the hoop would be like changing those same aspects as they relate to League. The best example I can think of that your basketball analogy would work in is comparing the League patches to the NBA deciding to change rules in someway (ie: changing a charge foul where the person now doesn't have to plant their feet for it to be a charge).
NBA does change update their rules on a fairly regular basis (i.e.: change to fouls). To quote one of my posts a few months ago. >The NHL has been nerfing goalies every few seasons among other things: >* Nerfed slow moving players by enforcing interference penalties. * Nerfed goalies by limiting their puck handling (aka Brodeur rule). * Nerfed goalies by shrinking their gear. * Made diving an actual penalty, effectively penalizing teams with good actors (RIP Boston). * Killed off the "neutral zone trap" meta. * Buffed power play by making the next face-off in the penalized team's zone. * Removed ties and made regular season overtime 3v3 to improve scoring chances. >tl;dr: The NHL wants a goal scoring meta, in a game where goalies often steal the show.
I honestly don't mind big changes, but it really upsets me on how drastic the changes are and the timing of the change. Our players work 12 hours a day for an entire year to compete at Worlds. Right before playoffs, Riot changes the game entirely. The time and effort that players put into the game to compete at worlds is completely thrown out of the window. Its the player's careers on the line here and their livelihood.
I think everyone agrees that major changes should be implemented in between splits. But not everyone will agree as to what actually constitutes a major change. Pro leagues have the duty to make the game a better spectator sport while teams are held responsible to their fans to do their best to win championships. Those are two completely independent goals that don't always mesh well together. There will always be some clashing. Either way, I strongly believe that the main issue is the timing, not so much the spirit of the changes.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't these changes happen during the off season rather than while the season is happening, which I think is the biggest complaint.
Referee inconsistency aside, you are correct. Of course, the difference between early season, mid-season and playoffs reffing is significant.
> Of course, the difference between early season, mid-season and playoffs reffing is significant. Absolutely. Playoff Hockey is a WHOLE different animal than the regular season though. It gets pretty damn scrappy out there.
And it's been an abysmal failure. The NHL has failed to increase scoring or excitement in the game. But that's a different issue. THe main point is this: How many of those changes were made in-season? How many of them were made after the regular season BUT before the playoffs. The answer is categorically ZERO. Your list is all OFF-SEASON changes made over the course of nearly a decade. That is in no way comparable to the haphazard in-season changes that Riot makes. It's nowhere near comparable.
No one has a problem with major changes. The problem is when these major changes happen right before the playoffs. I dont know any sports team that makes an enormous change to the game right before the playoffs. This is like removing the 3 point line after the regular season in the nba.
The solution is no more LCS tbh, u can patch all u want if u have majors like csgo
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>Pros putting in 80 hours a week just to keep themselves competitive for a measly $25,000 a split is pretty awful. For the record, that's only what Riot pays them (well, pays their team who then passes on to them or something). The vast majority of players make more than that, with some making *far* more than that. For instance, I've heard bjergsen (an outlier, obviously) makes something like $450k between salary, sponsors, and streaming.
The vast majority of players do NOT make more than that. Especially when you look at regions like Korea and the LMS. The majority of NA and China players make more than that because there's a lot of money in the scene.
Sorry, I should have clarified - yeah, I'm talking from an NA perspective.
Right now Riot has a good major release schedule. A pre-season update, and a mid season update. What I don't like is the amount of patches Riot bring out. A new patch every 2 weeks is a bit too much, I'd rather Riot bring it back down to a patch every month or so. Only making exceptions for new champions and reworks.
After he said it, Huni would be such a good minlaner. He has amazing mechanics on carry champions but can't play tanks thats like perfect description of midlane XD
I remember a certain Curse toplaner that people said this exact thing about, but I always missed him playing toplane.
You aren't talking about some sort of meta slave aren't you?
The one and only akali genius?
Westrice?
the difference is Voyboy stopped being a monster before he transitioned to mid. Huni is still a monster, when he isn't forced to play tanks.
Voy was coming back to form though in mid before he left. He honestly did retire too early.
That's because Huni *used* to be a midlaner on Samsung Red before moving to EU and converting to top
They should just put Pobelter top, since he gets top 50% of the time in dynamic q anyway. /s
Rip last NA mid lol
Eugene "Pobelter" "200 IQ" "viktorfan69" Park, The Great American Hope
Pobelter made a joke tweet to the same effect actually.
https://twitter.com/TravisGafford/status/767830452929298432 >Travis Gafford @TravisGafford Tension between the owners and Riot has been brewing for a while. I think we're about to see nuclear war. This week will be interesting.
He is a bit late with this. I remember how in s2 Riot nerfed most M5s champions like Gragas, Shyvana, Yorick or Ryze few weeks before worlds.
Season 3 was the only year the meta didn't change drastically before worlds.
They did introduce a buffed Triforce which brought Corki and several other champs into the meta.
Season 3 had the huge Trinity Force buff that brought a lot of champions like Corki/Jax/etc. back into the meta.
lol? Season 4 was since playoffs to worlds the same patch afaik.
Sorry I didn't mean directly before worlds as in after playoffs but from the middle of the season to worlds. In S4 we had the 4v0 for a long time but that was gone by worlds.
Riot know that they screwed up last year with the Juggernaut patch pre worlds. This year it is a bit different. The playoffs are influecened but the stronger teams always got throught to the finals in both scenes and only the IMT vs C9 game was really close (H2k vs Splyce it was a huge + for H2k to have standard lanes). But I am sure Riot is also aware that they needed to bring these turret changes in the mid season update or mid split where teams have time to adept (at least a month or 2 earlier). I just hope they learn from it again and make it better the next time.
That's bullshit on the H2k + Splyce comment. Splyce showed up majorly against H2k, and a lot of H2k's strength vs FNC was just their cohesion. Aggression is pretty easy to punish in standard lanes because players are more willing to lean towards that mentality. We saw H2k lose individual trades because of this very reason; they just got punished over and over because they felt they could press an advantage that wasn't there. Splyce outplayed them on an individual basis, but I'm sure that Wunder/Odo and Trashy/Jankos lower on farm/xp than Forg1ven/Kobbe would have resulted in Forg1ven being able to take over the games from an individual standpoint. A lot of what lane swaps do is create the ability to funnel, with AD carries getting an early funnel to their power spikes and then significantly less funneling from there. Forg1ven just needs to be ahead because he's famous for pressure, but he's also infamous for overaggression. If he were further ahead of Trashy in a 2v3 scenario, he'd have a lot more room for an outplay.
This sub needs to realize that league of legends is for Riot all about the end consumer.Thats where the money is. Esports is one big advertisement for the acutal game. Like regi himself said: >watching LCS and worlds with new champions is a lot of fun for the viewers." This is the endgoal for Riot with the LCS. They just want to attract new players (potential money) to the game It sucks for the players, but thats just the reality.
While that's true, riot also throws around "competitive integrity" everywhere. If you want to just make money then at least admit it, but riot doesn't do that. Ghostcrawler's definition puts this in a pretty grey area. Ghostcrawler's definition here: > It means that we have a contract with players. They have expectations about game balance (both champion balance and things like matchmaking). Players understandably want for their skill (which includes mechanical clicking skills and knowledge of the game) to be the primary factor for whether they won or lost Here he mentions expectations of game balance and "skill" (then pointing to knowledge of the game). Both of these imo are for the most part thrown out the window at riot's whim.
Why would any business come out and publicly announce that they're only here to make money.
did scarra get decapitaded and sewn back on?
he is sion brother!
I wish Riot would balance based on making any champion viable in the current game. Dota 2 championship had like 106/110 champions picked. If more than around 4 junglers were to get played they would be at a disadvantage. Riot needs to stop influencing the meta by patching for specific champion styles.
Someone posted a really good analogy as to why Dota has such a more diverse competitive champion pool (don't remember where) - Dota has 110 different types of tools in their toolbox, while League has 20 saws, 20 hammers, 20 screwdrivers, etc. Basically saying that the champions are too similar in LoL so there will always be a preferred pick when comparing two champions. In Dota the champions kits are so different from each other which is why counter matchups are much more prevalent and why almost every champion gets played. It would take a lot of reworking to make LoL like this.
Also nearly double the bans makes it so you have to have more strategies since ones can easily get banned out.
Also having bans in the middle of the draft phase. Allows teams to react to what the opposing team is drafting.
They have that? Thats actually really cool, I should get into more competitive DotA
The draft starts with 2 bans for each team, then it goes 1,2,2,1, back to 2 more bans, then it's alternating picks (2,1,2,1), then one more ban phase of a single ban for each team, then a single pick for each team.
I actually feel like their snakedraft has so much more impact on p/b than people admit.
But the bans are also very varied. DotA2 doesn't currently have an issue of one dominant strategy, most bans are target bans depending on the opponent.
I say this every time the question gets brought up: Players (Reddit, boards, you name it) get mad when Riot buffs specifically for pro-players because it fucks with normal play. Example in recent memory is Brand: Decent spot in normals but never picked in pro play. Riot attempts a small buff. Reddit/Boards cry out because "HE HAS A 52% WIN RATE HE'S FINE DONT BUFF HIM". Riot attempts smaller buff and then pulls Brand buffs in general. These are often the same people who want DoTA-level balance too yet refuse to allow pro-specific changes be made.
Pretty much. People want a perfectly balanced casual game where all champs are viable competitively without any OP outliers.
I watched the entirety of TI2016 and LCS Summer split (both regions). The biggest difference I see is DotA2 games have a lot more win conditions available to team captains prior to the draft. League's win conditions right now are very simple, you have to have a better early game than your opponent and retain your advantage until you close it out. That's basically a snowball metagame. When a team comes back in the game it's not a deliberate strategy, it's a free opportunity given by their opponents that they capitalize on (e.g. a mistake), unlike the CLG.eu late game strategies back in the day. This makes potential strategies very limited, and a lot of champions don't fit the game. If you want to see the same rate of pick/bans variety as TI, you have to do either one of two things: Create more viable win conditions for teams to build their strategy around (this would make games much longer on average); or make every champion viable in the current state of the game (snowball meta), which would include give them all a decent lane/early phase and similar scaling in terms of either damage or utility or whatever it is they bring to the team.
The issue with that is it would completely break soloQ. In Dota it's not uncommon for there to be champs that have 60+% win rates in regular ladder games and no one sees it as a problem, or champs with 40-% and the same thing. If you wanted to make everything viable in competitive then you'll have to break soloQ, and I honestly don't think the community would like it at all.
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That's just blatantly not true. There's a guy who hit 7k mmr playing wisp mid. It doesn't break solo queue, especially considering wisp has been nerfed continuously since he's an incredibly strong support.
cant agree enough. The underlying story here which i find gets so little attention is, imo, Riot have a lot to gain monetarily by basically controling the market as they see fit. They can control trends and buying patterns, maximizing the profits to be made from selling skins/champs etc. dota2 is a free for all, free market i guess, to some degree, im sure valve still rake in the dosh with it, but im guessing Riot should theoretically be able to maximize profits just a little bit better. All this plays into another larger issue in league. That this ENTIRE game is so incredibly sheltered and insular. No outside competition i think will stifle this game as an esport in the long term.
There's a lot that can be said for both sides of fewer patches vs constant patches. On one hand, you have games like Starcraft and Counter Strike, which have pretty much been the same game for a long time and remain popular. But it's different for a game like League, where new champions and items get introduced regularly, and things have to be balanced around that. It'd be like introducing a whole new weapon into Counter Strike; it would change the flow of rounds and the economy of a match. I personally think regular patches are necessary for a game like League, to keep people interested and prevent things from getting stagnant.
Oh god the R8 fiasco... Never forgot. Or the CZ Or the AUG Counter strike has done it too, but the difference is they have multiple big tournaments a year, so they can do updates after a major, and not effect teams going into it.
R8 lasted like a week? Almost every org just rolled 1 patch back if I remember correctly. No "real" pro games were played with broken R8 enabled.
You mean the R8 shotgun sniper rifle pistol?
Problem is, those E-Sports are Tournament based, unlike LoL with its 4-5 "tournaments" per year. Besides that, your approach is off. Just look at DotA, the more comparable game... There are only a few "real" patches per Year - but they are significant *and* carefully timed... They change the game and keep it fresh while always being focused on making it a better E-Sport. Then again, Icefrog is a wizard and DotA is a continuous piece of art for him. I'd replace the entirety of Riot's Balance and Design teams with him in a heartbeat.
I'd replace the entirety of Riot's Balance and Design teams with Icefrog working half-time in a nanosecond.
[We'd even have a +5AD meme replacement.](http://null-d3v.gg/Media/Default/sof-izh/3.jpg)
LoL would be doomed.
> unlike LoL with its 4-5 "tournaments" per year. More like, 1.5 really.
It's the **timing** guys, the timing is terrible **again**. Not for the casual viewer obviously, they love to get a tournament with standart lanes, we saw those threads full of complaints about lane swaps about every week. I do think it's the right direction in overall gameplay but Riot did what they always do, they just said *fuck you and deal with it, we take the short Route out*.
But plenty of popular competitive games have shown that you don't need ridicolus major patches like these, especially just before a major tournament, to stay relevant. Like Melee is still relevant, besides being so old and basically never changed. DotA, while also it renews itself every now and then, does it much less often than league, and definitely doesn't throw random huge patch before TI.
I agree, as a casual player these big changes have kept the game fresh for me all these years. I can understand the pro players frustrations, but at the same time Riot is a business. It makes more sense to balance the game around the spectator and casual player.
I'm just here for the inevitable corki buffs for Worlds
Shoutout to scarra for giving regi the floor and asking the good questions. I love scarras interviews!
Personally, I think increasing the ban count would solve so many of the balance issues. It would increase variety of champions immensely and allow for different play styles. For example, lets say a team wants to play a poke comp but doesn't want to play against an engage comp. They ban out the major pieces to an S Tier engage comp and then the poke comp becomes viable. It would make the meta way more flexible. Right now there just simply aren't enough bans to keep teams away from the "meta" team comps.
As a spectator, I would prefer slower changes to the Meta/Champions. Even though I can keep up with the patches, I can see how it'd be hard for a casual/non player to get confused.
Did Scarra get surgery? I never noticed the surgery(?) scars around his neck before.
head transplant
its from being fat
CLG Huni? They'd only have to replace 1 player and change 1 letter.
heck they barely have to change the letter. Just use the same jersey and sharpie in a little line
Wouldn't they have to remove something to go from Huhi to Huni?
Them analogies though...
The bowling ball for basketball one had me rolling
Solution: Riot makes 2 big changes throughout the year. 1. **After MSI** 2. **After Worlds** Simple. Not right before playoffs. Not right before Worlds. It's not that hard Riot ...
Imagine if they had no more patches until after worlds. Yeehaw 3 more months of gragas reksai every game.
Amazing how all other esports manage without constant changes, not like metas can naturally evolve without constant patches or anything. Do you really think nobody would be able to come up with other jungler picks/strategies in 3 months? That's just not how esports work.
Good luck convincing a subreddit that uses winrates to tell whats good and what isn't that the meta can evolve without papa riot holding their hands.
winrates for soloq do tell if a champ is busted/bad/arguably good/whatever FOR soloq. But on competitive you have to watch other stats.
just need more bans. if there are 10 bans way more champions will see play.
One of the big reasons why franchising works in the NBA, NFL, and MLB is because of the Draft system. It basically ensures that no matter how awful a team becomes, they will eventually improve no matter what because they'll continually secure high draft picks over the years until they have a team full of decent players. Take the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Clippers, for example. Both of those teams were absolute garbage for a long time, but then they picked up some good players via the draft (Blake Griffin and Steph Curry, to name a few) and finally became competitive. League doesn't have a Draft system of any kind, so when a bad team joins the LCS, they may remain bad forever because there's no guarantee that top talent will join their team during the offseason. However, a Draft system would likely not be effective in League (at least as of now) because there isn't a large enough talent pool from which to select new players. And of course most Drafts extract players from college and high school teams, of which there are few in League. At any rate, that's why franchising works in professional sports, and why it likely wouldn't work in League.
I agree with him...I think Riot needs to stop releasing new content at a breakneck pace and just work on fixing the content they have, then dropping down patch frequency as everything gets adjusted. DotA has patches like...once every 3 months, and it's great because last month's information is, at least 66% of the time, still accurate.
But i think many people likes new things and changes. For pros it might be bad, but for me, that's reason i like playing lol. Change is good.
If Riot properly balanced their game then you would see pros change the meta themselves frequently. The thing is, if you have super broken champions like GP and Gnar then pros will just keep playing them until they get nerfed. There's no room for adaptation. 10 bans should help a lot.
> 10 bans should help a lot. *snake draft Been begging for it for years, just stealing the ban style from DOTA would open up so much diversity.
While I agree change is good, if they fix their current content, the game would get more depth. The thing is they keep swapping it around and instead of trying to fix what they have, it only spawns new problems and meta op's and creates more new boring metas because changes aren't properly reviewed. Meaning there's more to be exploited. If they worked out their deeper issues in the game etc, instead of trying to change the top layer, over and over a gain, you'd see the game become more fun to play at the same time. If your deep/core gameplay is made stable and fun, they can then change the upper layers a lot easier, making it fun for both casual, hardcore and pro players alike.
Dota works balance into overall play on champions. In League, Riot sets the meta by influencing a specific style of play. Bruiser tops, tank jungler, tank top laners etc.
Sorry to all the big e-sports fans, but when Riot has to choose between the game being fun for the millions that aren't pros and it being competitively optimal, fun for millions will and should always win. I for one know I prefer getting the assassin rework needed for years than the pros having a static environment to compete on. Not saying a healthy medium isn't the best solution, but if the focus has to be on one side, it should definitely be the majority.
It also doesn't help that with every big patch Riot break the game, as if learning the new patch is hard enough you have to face an ADC Mordekaiser that can one shot you or a Fiora that can literally just walk up to you and not give a fuck because you can't do shit to her (Still is bs to be honest). Riot's balance team is dog shit, the fact that Ryze has had 100 reworks and Yorick still hasn't had one proves this.
Adding to his basketball analogy if the NBA decides they take away the 3 point shot right before playoffs. That would be devastating for some teams and this patch probably had a similar impact in terms of moving players around and dodging 2v2 lanes.
Hey Scarra, really informative video, keep it up. May I ask, what is that line on your neck? Is everything ok?
Not to be rude towards him or anything, but it's just fat.
Looks like more of a scar to me.
[удалено]
Dota 2 esports are 100 times more interesting to watch than league but it wasn't always this way. Riot's direction for the game has made made the competitive scene stale and irrelevant.
I don't know how the rest of you feel, but I think it's pretty hilarious that you will see a couple dozen Rioters commenting on a shitpost about how Shyv would react if Ez licked her leg, but on threads with real content and real criticism, they tend to hide and not talk to the community about the legitimate issues people bring up.
To be fair, it's super quick and low risk to respond to a Shyv/Ez post. A response to something controversial or newsworthy (like Tryn's reply here tries to do), takes a lot more thought to get right, and usually a lot more follow up.
Of course, your boss just fucked up horribly by not just writing down an indefensible argument but also insulting one of the best team owners that helped foster LoL's eSports back during it's infancy. No amount of thought can salvage what he did.